Life-saving swimming garments are designed to decrease the number of drowning cases amongst children while swimming in the open sea or in swimming-pools. Swimming in the open sea requires overcoming safety problems, such as powerful drift currents and swirls, which are risky even for a skilled swimmer.
During the swimming season, swimming areas in the sea and swimming-pools are enormously crowded, and therefore, the ability of lifeguards to notice an emergency situation is limited, particularly in case of a drowning child who is not a skilled swimmer. It requires only a few seconds for a small child to disappear underwater without any attention paid by the adults in the vicinity, and especially the attention of the lifeguard who has to notice any exceptional or emergency situation. Also, toddlers, who have been left unsupervised in a bath for few moments, can lose their balance, while sitting, and drown, even though it is very shallow water.
Several approaches to overcome drowning problems use buoyant clothing, e.g., inflatable arm bands, annular flotation members, etc. All these inflatable devices generally limit the mobility of a young swimmer so that he cannot enjoy the swimming activity. Therefore, inflatable devices are usually not worn by the children who have developed some swimming skills.
Those swimming skills are often not sufficient to function in panic situations or at momentary lapsing of the swimmer's capabilities. Moreover, in most cases, toddlers or babies take off the inflatable device or refuse to put it on.
JP 2,241,890 discloses a floating device for rescuing a drowning person. The floating device is a necklace-shaped float tube that fits, before inflation, onto the neck of the swimmer. The necklace-shaped float tube is attached to a miniature sealed sack by means of an air pipe. The sealed sack contains miniature timer, an electronic circuit and an air bottle. The air bottle comprises a valve which is located in the air bottle stopper. The valve is connected to the electronic circuit which is attached to the miniature timer by wiring. A water-sensor that floats on the water surface is connected to the electronic circuit, by a wire. When the swimmer is drowning, the water-sensor wire is forced against the water-sensor which is sunk down and activates the miniature timer. The miniature timer is adjusted by the swimmer to a threshold underwater time. When the threshold time lapses, a signal is sent to the electrical circuit which, in turn, sends a command to the valve to open. After the valve is opened, the air from the bottle flows to the float tube through the air pipe, and inflates it. Thus, the inflated float tube floats to the swimmer up above the water surface level for breathing. However, there are some drawbacks associated with this device. When a child is playing in the sea or in a swimming-pool where the water is shallow, the danger of drowning still exists. In this case, the floating/rescuing device may be useless when a child is lying unconscious at the bottom of shallow swimming-pool or sea. The floating device may not inflate because the water-sensor is not deep enough to create the appropriate force between the water-sensor and the sealed sack, which is needed to operate the miniature timer. On the other hand, a child who is a more skilled swimmer wants to dive more than a few centimeters below the water surface level without restrictive devices. Using the device described hereinabove, restricts the swimmer to stay close to the water surface level. Thus, false alarms may be caused.
An additional drawback of such devices is their arrangement/structure. Swimming or paddling within an aquatic environment should be safe and comfortable feeling This floating device, when inflated, may apply pressure on the neck and may cause blood flow and breathing problems. Furthermore, the device's components are attached to the float tube by an air pipe and a wire that hang freely from the neck, thereby interrupting swimming.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an inflatable life-saving swimming garment for children and toddlers which overcomes the problems associated with the prior art.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an inflatable life-saving swimming garment for children and toddlers which is operable automatically in an actual emergency situation.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide an inflatable life-saving swimming garment for children, which is instantly operable when the child is in distress.
It is an additional object of the present invention to provide an inflatable life-saving swimming garment for children and toddlers which floats them up with the head directed upward.
It is another advantage of the present invention to provide an inflatable life-saving swimming garment for children and toddlers that is reliable.
Additional objects and advantages of the present invention shall become clear as the description proceeds.